


we’re going nowhere slowly, but we're seeing all the sights

by cosmicpoet



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Enemies to Friends, F/M, Platonic Relationships, Recreational Drug Use, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 09:52:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18588826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: Seven and Lotus share an apartment. They're better friends than anyone would have ever guessed.





	we’re going nowhere slowly, but we're seeing all the sights

“Seven, get in here!”

At the sound of Lotus’ voice, Seven blinks away the half-sleep from his eyes, hauls himself up off the sofa and, stifling a yawn with his hand, walks into her room.

“Have you been napping in the living room _again?”_ Lotus says.

“What about it?”

“Anyway, just help me zip this dress up. It’s fuckin’ uncomfortable, but it looks goddamn stellar on me.”

“Still dressing like a twenty year old, huh?”

She shoots a glare, then a smile, at him. “Still got the looks for it, buddy.”

He fumbles with the zip for a moment, finally catching onto it and pulling it up. When she turns around, she throws her arms out and raises an eyebrow.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“How do I look?”

“Ask me again after I’ve had a few beers,” he laughs.

Lightly slapping him on the shoulder, she smiles too. She picks a pair of stilettos from her wardrobe, matching them against her dress with a hum of approval, then walks over to her vanity to apply the last few touches of makeup.

The buzzer of their apartment rings, and Lotus tells Seven that that’ll be her date. After a few bad jokes about this being her third tinder date this month, he goes over to the intercom and tells the man on the other end of the line that he’ll buzz him up, and that the door to apartment 87 is unlocked, so he should just let himself in whilst _Hazuki_ finishes getting ready.

“It’s weird,” she says, “when you say my real name.”

“Lotus suits you better.”

“Still, you’re the only bastard who can get away with calling me that now.”

When the door to the apartment opens, Lotus ushers Seven out, telling him to give her five more minutes before she’s ready. He walks into the living room and sees a tall man - although not as tall as him - already sitting on the sofa.

“You’re here for Hazuki?” Seven says, monotone.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“What, you’re like, her roommate or something?”

“Yeah.”

“So what do you do then? For a living?”

“I used to be a cop.”

“A cop, huh?”

“Yeah. And a good one, at that.”

“Scary.”

“Only to bad guys,” Seven smirks. Before the man can respond, Lotus walks out of her bedroom, ready to go. As they leave, Seven nods at her, giving her a little smile.

Five minutes later, he gets the regular text. The man’s license plate, full name, and the name of the restaurant they’re going to. It’s something she insists on doing no matter how many first dates shegoes on, and he’s more than happy to oblige when it comes to matters of her safety.

In the kitchen, he boils the kettle for some cup noodles, resting against the counter and looking at the mess of an apartment he shares with Lotus. It’s obvious which side of the apartment they both lay claim to, with the rightmost side by the window home to soda-can bongs and bottles of room temperature beer, crime novels with inconsistencies and over-dramatised tropes highlighted and corrected in black ink. Lotus’ side of the living room - the left side - is just as messy, but the things that owe their existence to her are different; multiple games consoles and controllers, a perfectly clean glass bong, bags upon bags of half-eaten crisps and sweets that she finds herself snacking on whenever they smoke up together.

It’s not perfect, but Seven smiles at the sight of it.

As he scrolls through Netflix, he marks down shows that he’d like to watch, but that he knows they’d both prefer to watch together. Finally settling on some dumb horror movie from the early 2000s, he keeps his phone on loud volume in case she texts, and settles down with his cup noodles. As far as nights go, this one is pretty chill, he thinks.

Until his phone beeps.

It’s a text from Lotus.

**< From Lotus: 21:04> **can you come pick me up, no questions asked?

**< To Lotus: 21:04> **ye but i have to ask one question, where are u?

**< From Lotus: 21:05> **i'll send you my location. will explain in the car

She sends him her location, which pops up on his phone as the middle of nowhere, without a visible street name or number. Still, he’s out of the apartment within the minute, getting the directions up on his phone, which rests in the little holder on the windshield of his old truck. Although he used to be a cop, there are some laws he’ll break, namely going a little over the speed limit if it means he’ll get there faster. Of course he trusts her, and knows that she can handle her own, but he imagines the sirens and blue lights that he used to be surrounded by, and handles the dark back-alleys and streets with the urgency of someone who had to toughen their skin to danger.

She’s sitting on the street corner, alone, rubbing her hands up her arms and scowling. When he pulls up next to her, she wordlessly opens the door of the truck and gets inside. Before he drives off again, he takes his jacket off, muttering just loud enough for her to hear how he’s boiling hot, and hands it to her in the passenger seat.

“Don’t say it,” she says, putting his jacket on.

“Say what?”

“I told you so.”

“I didn’t tell you shit, Lotus. I ain’t gonna throw whatever this is in your face. Do you wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“Alright. You want McDonalds?”

She nods.

“Did you not eat at the restaurant?”

_“God,”_ she starts talking, “he was such an asshole! I ordered steak and chips and he was like, ‘erm no, the lady will have a salad to keep her figure’ and I was like ‘the lady wants a fucking steak’ and he just started being all sexist and dumb and trying to make me sound like a fragile little flower that needed protecting and all that kind of shit, and when I asked him to drive me home he must’a realised halfway along the journey that there was zero fucking chance of him getting any tonight, so he just stopped the car and told me to get out and then sped off.”

“Jesus. What an asshole. McDonalds is on me, then.”

He pulls up to the drive thru, rolling down his window and turning to her. “You want your usual?”

“Hell yeah,” she says, “you remember what it is?”

“Don’t test me,” he laughs, turning to the screen and starting to order, “yeah, uh, can I get a large quarter pounder meal with fries, extra onions, extra cheese, extra pickles, with a strawberry milkshake please?”

“Holy shit, you did remember,” Lotus mutters.

“And, uh, I’d like a double cheeseburger and large fries with a coke, please.”

He pulls up to the next window and pays for the food, and then they’re driving again, taking the long route back to the apartment. Every so often, he looks over at her, and she looks happier now that she’s off the side of the road and on the way home.

The apartment is a safe place for both of them. Kicking off their shoes, Seven loads up Netflix and they eat together until there’s nothing left, and then they pull out their respective bongs and light up. Simple nights like these are something they’re not going to take for granted, not after facing death and wondering what it’s like to carry on after going to the precipice of life.

“We should start working out together again,” she says, “that was fun.”

“Until we got kicked out of three gyms,” he laughs.

“What was that even _for?”_

“Uh, the first one was ‘cause we started throwing the weights at each other.”

“Oh, shit, I remember that.”

“The second was when you decked that guy who was being gross to us.”

“Fond memories,” Lotus smiles.

“And the third was -”

“I remember! You got kicked out ‘cause you lost a dare and streaked in the pool.”

“I didn’t think there were any employees around!”

“How far out you think we’ll have to go to find a gym this time?”

“And how long before we get kicked out?”

“It’s fun, though,” Lotus says, and Seven nods.

“Hey,” he says, “I got you something.”

“Really?”

She sounds surprised. For some reason, she always does, when he gets her little presents. They’re usually just dumb things, like McDonalds toys or stickers for her gaming PC that say ‘I LOVE PORK ROLL’ and other nonsense things that make her laugh. He doesn’t know why, but it’s one of the things he holds closest to his heart after the ordeal they went through, that no matter what happens, he can still make someone else smile.

So, he pulls out the friendship bracelets he bought for them both. They’re two halves of a circle, and when they’re put together, they say ‘BEST BUDS’; one of them has a picture of a joint, the other a lighter.

She snorts when she sees them, closing her eyes and covering her mouth at a failed attempt to stifle the laughter that comes out. She puts one of them on his wrist, and he puts the other on hers, and with the sounds of terrible Netflix shows in the background, and the bubble of water from their bongs, they get so caught up in living together that it’s easy to push away the thoughts that they almost died together, too.

**Author's Note:**

> You can't convince me that these two aren't absolute bros. Based on the headcanons that me and my friend Syd yell about in DMs.
> 
> Title from 'The Ballad of Me and My Friends' by Frank Turner


End file.
